Court Halts Jewish-only Land

March 9, 2000|By TRACY WILKINSON Los Angeles Times and Information from The Washington Post was used to supplement this report.

JERUSALEM — In a landmark decision that strikes at the heart of Israel's identity as a Jewish state, the High Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that the government may no longer allocate land to its citizens based on their religion or ethnicity and may no longer prevent Arab citizens from living where they choose.

Acting on a discrimination complaint brought by an Israeli Arab family barred from buying a home in a Jewish community, the court challenged the very land-distribution policy on which the Jewish state was founded 52 years ago.

The sale of land to Arabs -- who make up about 20 percent of Israel's population of 6 million -- has been heavily restricted out of concerns for security and demographics.

With Wednesday's 4-1 ruling, the court stepped into Israel's existential debate over whether it is first and foremost a democratic or a Jewish state. In confronting the inherent contradiction, the court sided with democracy. And it chose the most fundamental conflict in the Middle East -- the right to land -- as its venue for doing so.

The court ruled that separate Arab and Jewish communities are "inherently unequal" and discriminate against Arabs. Although the court construed its ruling narrowly, confining it to the circumstances of this single case, it made clear that the broad and accepted pattern of banning Arabs from Jewish developments in Israel is not likely to endure in future court cases.

"The principle of equality prohibits the state from distinguishing between its citizens on the basis of religion or nationality," Chief Justice Aharon Barak wrote. "The principle also applies to the allocation of state land. The Jewish character of the state does not permit Israel to discriminate between its citizens."

The court's action ended a 4 1/2-year battle that began when the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed suit on behalf of an Israeli Arab couple, Adel and Iman Kaadan.

While it isn't likely that many Arabs will immediately try to move into Jewish communities, civil rights activists and Israeli Arab politicians hailed Wednesday's decision as a victory for democratic values and equality.

But numerous Jewish legislators said it threatens the fundamental raison d'etre of Israel.

The National Religious Party, which is a member of the governing coalition, decried the ruling as a suicidal blow against Zionism and promised legislation in parliament to bypass it.

The state controls 93 percent of Israeli land, and most of that has been designated for Jewish settlement through the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body.

The full implications of the ruling were still coming into focus Wednesday.

Mindful of its ground-shattering potential, the court -- often accused by its critics of being overly activist -- advised caution. It said it was not addressing certain types of Jewish settlement, such as kibbutzim or "moshavim" (collective farms), and left room for communities to claim "special circumstances" that might constitute an exception to the discrimination rules.

In addition, the ruling applies only to land that was part of Israel before the 1967 war in which Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Furthermore, no one is predicting large movements of Arabs into Jewish communities. Israel is a largely segregated society, and most Arabs, who can vote in Israeli elections but do not serve in the army and often find their loyalty questioned, live in Arab villages. Because of tradition and the desire to stay with one's own, they remain in such villages even though they are generally impoverished.

But the Kaadans were determined to escape that kind of life.

The couple and their three daughters lived in the broken-down, overcrowded Arab village of Baqa al Gharbiya. There was no sewer system, and asbestos covered the walls of the makeshift school. Envious of the lawns, neat fences and whitewashed homes of the nearby community of Kazir, the Kaadans applied to buy a lot there.

But Kazir, established in northwest Israel by the Jewish Agency on state land, was for Jews only. In a first, the Kaadans sued.

"We thought this would be an opportunity to have [something better] for our children," said Iman Kaadan, 33, who, like her husband, speaks Hebrew. "But they didn't take us because we were Arabs."

An ebullient Adel Kaadan went on Israeli television Wednesday to praise the ruling as "a victory for Israeli democracy and for the equality of Jews and Arabs." He said he would apply immediately to buy a home in Kazir.

But do you, an Arab, really want to live among Jews?, the television interviewer asked him.

"Only coexistence will solve our problems," Kaadan, 45, a nurse in an Israeli hospital, said in Hebrew. "Even the Berlin Wall came down. Why build new walls?"

Information from The Washington Post was used to supplement this report.